Fader: Same as it always is, your boss is a butcher. He proved that in the Fourth Defiance. I’ll always stand against him.

Anubis: You are pretending you have a problem with butchers? You work for Peggy Martin!

Fader: She isn’t the one burning cities to the ground around these parts.

Anubis: Really? Have you seen what your new compatriots left in their wake in Laredo?

Fader: …

Anubis: In case you haven’t, they burned it to the fucking ground. So go on and tell me how that’s ok with you.

Fader: I… look…

Anubis: Was it ok because it was on our side of a line on a map? Because it dared to stand up to your boss?

Fader: No, but…it’s a war, right? They probably didn’t have a choice.

Anubis: Ah, so Zeus is a butcher because he fights back when Prevailer sends her goons to slaughter his people, but she is not a butcher when she sends them, because no choice or whatever? That makes sense to you?

Fader: You are twisting it.

Anubis: I’m not asking for much. I’m asking you to swap your allegiance from the bad woman who rules a few million to the bad men and women who rule billions. Turn your coat, your bosses certainly can’t get any worse.

Fader: One of your bosses is literally named Death. She runs slaughter camps.

Anubis: To make Ultras to defend us against the Fists. Have you been deathless so long you’ve forgotten what it is to fear?

Fader: Nothing about the Link changes who we are.

Anubis: Debatable, and also, I wasn’t talking about the Link. I’m talking about your power. Your vaunted ability to take yourself out of a situation. Just turn yourself into this powerless, and protected, image, and let the world go by.

Fader: My Gift didn’t change me either. I do what I can to protect the place I grew up in. I would do that even if I could die.

Anubis: Sure you would.

Fader: Believe what you want.

Anubis: Alright, this was the usual waste of time.

Fader: Don’t act like you are surprised. You had to know how this would go.

Anubis: I did, but my bosses are always curious. It would have been good to preserve you once the Regime was gone. Someone needs to run North America for the Pantheon.

Fader: The Regime doesn’t look to be going anywhere.

Anubis: You aren’t looking in the right places. The Fifth Defiance is already underway.

Krishna: Thor was aimed at me, and I was expressly forbidden from removing the danger. My gift was twitchy for weeks about it, but I obeyed. Then the Archenemy arrives on my doorstep, exactly as he is making his move against me.

Kami: The-

Krishna: We are massacred wholesale. My forces suffer serious attrition, Thor’s are annihilated, and the enemy is triumphant. And yet you show up to commend me? A promotion?

Kami: What happened to you was unavoidable. We do not believe that it reflects a failing in your efforts at command.

Krishna: I know it was unavoidable, in the same way that “what is 2 + 2, don’t say 4” is unanswerable. I was prevented from avoiding it, and now I’m not being punished for my failure. Taken together, it is apparent that the whole thing was a setup.

Kami: As wise as I’ve heard, if a bit headstrong.

Krishna: I’m right here.

Kami: Apologies. One grows accustomed to a certain oblique manner of speaking, in the circles I travel in-

Krishna: The Leadership.

Kami: yes, yes, that’s what I meant. … In any case, you are quite correct. Your force was expended in order to confirm a report.

Krishna: What report? What information was worth the lives of so many of our Ultras?

Kami: A hole in Her protector’s sight. A weakness, at long last.

Krishna: Prevailer’s protector?

Kami: Have you ever wondered why Zeus never simply lead a kill team to destroy Her, as he did Fourth Fist?

Krishna: I don’t want to know. It doesn’t seem safe to speculate about. Above my level. I wouldn’t want to be seen as doubting Zeus.

Kami: Well, there is no harm in speaking in generalities. The reason that no one has ever killed Ms. Martin is that She is defended by some manner of forsight or prediction. Events are steered to benefit her. Until this is no longer the case, all direct confrontations are unwise.

Krishna: And somehow setting my unit up changed that?

Kami: Not exactly. It exposed a weakness that an intelligence source had described. Due to a certain factor, events transpired in a manner that was not forseen, which will lead to minor ripple effects. Of greater interest is setting up a situation to exploit this weakness again, and strip the Archenemy of her defenses long enough to put her down.

Krishna: What factor, and what weakness?

Kami: My apologies, but that information is, as you say, “above your level”.

Attacker: You got your ass handed to you by some bitch I never heard of.

Pursuer: He was fucking enormous.

Attacker: I’ve seen you throw a skyscraper, Pup. Didn’t Averter say this guy didn’t have Ultra strength at all?

Pursuer: You are correct and I am a bitch.

Attacker: Let him talk, babe, you heard Remover.

Pursuer: There was no one afraid there.

Attacker: He wasn’t afraid of you? You are a fucking werewolf.

Pursuer: Yeah, but he didn’t give a shit.

Attacker: And the fucking crowd?

Pursuer: No one is afraid of people in the ring. They don’t think that we will come out and kill them.

Attacker: But still, no powers or whatever..you are still a werewolf. He is still a dude. Averter said that up in the ring, off the ground, he wouldn’t have any powers at all.

Pursuer: *growling noise*

Alerter: Long speech incoming guys, hard to parse. I’ll try and make his voice work right, but he’s really putting a strain on the tooth clack code we use.

Pursuer: Look, I don’t really fight hand to hand without being Ultra strong, alright? I can’t even remember the last time it happened. This guy apparently does it all the time. He was stronger than me and a better fighter. He kicked my ass.

Attacker: Bitch! Some random fucking wrestler kicked your ass, and you just take that shit? What’s the fucking point of you if some jackass can completely clown you out.

Pursuer: He might not have been afraid of me but you, on the other hand….

Alerter: I’m not letting you say that to her!

Pursuer: *growling noise*

Remover: Quiet.

Remover: We are going to kill this guy. I’ll put the story out that you let him win just to build up his confidence, so it was all the sweeter when you killed him, something like that. Not everyone will believe it, but it is better than nothing.

Averter: There might be a problem with that.

Remover: What?

Averter: From what I’m hearing, this ‘Indulger’ skipped town right after the fight.

Alerter: Where is he heading?

Averter: No one knows. Apparently he just heads out into the wilderness sometimes, stays out there for months.

Vanessa: We have a new source inside the Regime, one slightly more cooperative. He spilled the beans, and it has your fingerprints all over it. Prevailer can’t multiply by nines without looking at Her fingers. There is no way that She came up with this scheme.

Adder: You underestimate Her, but … you are correct.

Vanessa: So you admit it? You knew Linker’s identity, all this time, and you didn’t inform us?

Adder: Indeed. I would have preferred that that knowledge never be made public. I know that it is fruitless to ask your organisation to restrain itself, but you must know that no good will come of any effort in this area.

Vanessa: No good will come of cutting off Her supply of immortal soldiers? Have you lived with Her so long that you’ve forgotten what they are used for?

Adder: Not for one minute.

Vanessa: They are terror troops! They are executioners, rendered fearless by Linker’s gift and set loose among their prey. The Fists are monstrosities.

Adder: They are groups of people. They obey Her because they are afraid of Her. It is understandable. They have a difficult role.

Vanessa: You are so full of understanding for the killers. Do you ever give any thought to us? While you sit here, in your palace, pining over how hard these monsters have it, do you for even one second consider how hard the rest of us have it? Do you consider what it must feel like to be mercilessly hunted by these deathless freaks?

Adder: To be truthful, it rarely crosses my mind. I assign great moral weight to the suffering that my decisions entail, but the truth is that the subjective experience is mostly foreign to me. As you point out, mine is a comparatively pampered existence.

Vanessa: I’m amazed to hear you admit that.

Adder: Lying to oneself is pointless. Lying to your organization previously had an important point. Protecting Linker protected you, and in all things I strive to protect our world.

Vanessa: Protect your master, you mean.

Adder: The two are one and the same.

Vanessa: She survived before She had Linker. She won’t go to pieces just because he’s gone.

Adder: How little you understand. Linker is nothing to Her. She despises him. But his gift keeps Her friends alive, and they are everything to Her.

Vanessa: Friends! Prevailer has friends? Tell me another one.

Adder: Confederates, then. The word doesn’t matter. Peggy Martin is desperately lonely. Her Fists are important existences to Her.

Vanessa: And now your sympathy extends to a killer of billions. How convenient, that you feel most keenly the pain of those it would inconvenience you to act against. It’s almost as though your vaunted kindness is simply a mask for abject cowardice.

Adder: I’m sorry that you feel that way.

Vanessa: We’ll be taking Linker off of the board.

Adder: Please tell your superiors not to act on this information. I fear the consequences of any action against Linker.